MARCH, 1968, A-SHAU VALLEY WEST OF HUE
ON THE LAOTIAN BORDER, REPUBLIC OF SOUTH VIETNAM

Captain Nguyen Thai of the North
Vietnamese Army stared through the lenses of his East German binoculars at
bare-headed American soldiers tossing dirt onto growing mounds that would
become fighting positions. He judged the distance between them and his men—hidden
in a clump of trees about fifty meters behind him—to be about seventy-five
meters.Each man in his company waited
for the order that would send all two hundred fifty of them creeping in
darkness through the meter- high, razor-sharp elephant grass. They hoped a mortar barrage would let them get
close enough to toss grenades into the machine-gun pits and then overwhelm the
American defenders inside their defensive perimeter.

Thai was sure his head was well below
the small rise; he pulled out his map to mark what he assumed would be M-60
machine gun positions that would be targets for his two mortars. He was lying
on his back, which gave him a chance to study the shape of the few cumulous
clouds, when a flash froze him in place.He scanned the sky.

He sensed the North American F-100 jets’
presence before he saw or heard them, but by then it was too late.Thai recognized the jets as they flew low and
parallel to the tree line, which meant one thing: napalm.Time slowed as he watched two silver canisters
tumble from the first F-100’s wings and, despite the fading shriek of the jets’
engines, he heard the pop as the tanks exploded just above the treetops.Thai tried to roll under an exposed root just
as the air was sucked out of his lungs.He wondered what the odd odor was, and then realized he was smelling his
clothes and flesh burn.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 1971, 0700 LOCAL TIME,ALONG THE HO CHI MINH TRAIL BORDER ABOUT
40 MILES WEST OF DONG HA, THE NORTHERNMOST TOWN IN SOUTH VIETNAM

Dawn doesn’t come easy in the jungle,
and the lack of early morning light makes people think it is earlier than it
is. The pungent smell of a cooking fire
alerted Marty Cabot’s stomach to tell his brain to shift into wake-up gear and
get some breakfast, but an unfamiliar weight pressing into his abdomen kept him
from moving. He tilted his head up and
saw the blue and black bands of a krait coiled on his belly.

The krait sensed its warm bed stir and
raised its oval head to sample the air with its forked tongue, while it stared
at the dirty face with six days’ growth of beard. It slithered off after deciding the source of
the heat was not a meal. When the deadly
foot-long snake was about three feet away, Marty pulled his Kukri, a Gurkha
knife, from the sheath on the side of his pack and with a short stroke chopped
off the snake’s head.

The silent beheading brought smiles from
the other seven members of his team, one of whom gutted the snake and put the
carcass in a plastic bag to save it as a potential meal. No one spoke since they, too, smelled pungent
mung bean paste mixed with rice and other spices heating in leaves, which would
become banh chung for the NVA soldiers about one hundred and fifty
meters away on the other side of the clearing that was supposed to be their
primary pick-up point. After Marty motioned to two of his men to go down the
trail to see if their claymores had been disarmed, he low-crawled to the center
of the even-sided, triangular shaped ravine where he could study the grass- covered
meadow, whose shape and size matched the picture in his pack. As he scanned the
tree line on the far side, he could see tendrils of smoke and an occasional
North Vietnamese soldier.

It was decision time. Were the
Vietnamese passing through, or were they waiting to ambush the helicopter
coming to pick them up? He munched on
his next to last D-ration candy bar while observing the Vietnamese soldiers
prepare their breakfast.

Today was “hunger day” for the SEALs,
whose call sign for this mission was Gringo Six, because it was the day they
ate the last of their rations. If they had to stay in North Vietnam longer,
they would have to live off what they could find in the jungle. They’d already begun to prepare for that
possibility by collecting wild fruit—mostly pomelos — and now the dead snake.

Gentle pressure on his leg told Marty to
slide back from his perch. A team member
told him in hushed tones that their claymores were untouched, and the extra
grenade they’d set to explode if anyone had cut the trip wires was also
undisturbed.

They’d arrived at the LZ a day earlier
after spending three days counting trucks passing between the lines of porters
who pushed bicycles with saddle bags filled with supplies on the Ho Chi Minh
Trail. Movement continued day and night along the section they watched, though
the southward flow stopped to allow small convoys with wounded soldiers to pass
on their way north. The most important
find was a refueling station that, if the drums of fuel were set on fire, would
slow the movement of trucks until it was replenished. Decision time. Move or stay? If they moved, they’d have to contact the Air
Force EC-121s, which flew orbits over Laos with the call sign of Billiard Ball,
to tell Big Mother 40 to pick them up at their first alternate pick-up point,
Kneissl 200, instead of the primary one labeled “alpha.”

Marty looked at his map and confirmed
that Kneissl 200 was about two kilometers away from their present position before
taking up his perch again to watch the North Vietnamese soldiers. They had time before they had to notify
Billiard Ball if they wanted to change the pick- up time and location.

He was studying the map and was about to
make the call on whether they should move to Kneissl 200 or stay, when a team
member tapped his foot. Looking up, the
hand signals told him what the suddenly quiet jungle said—many NVA were
approaching their position from their front and to the right, and a battle was
about to begin.

Marty folded the map as he reviewed
their plan to escape from the deep, wedge-shaped ravine that had its ten-yard
wide base a few yards inside the tree line and narrowed into the tip of a
triangle that stretched farther into in the jungle about eight yards down the
hillside. Water erosion had dug it about four to five feet deep in places,
which made it an excellent defensive position, but no one in Gringo Six had any
intention of making their last stand there. As he gathered the team, Marty figured they
had ten minutes to deploy to their pre-selected positions before the shit hit
the fan.

One fire team of two SEALs would protect
each side of the triangle while the fourth team, equipped with one of the
Stoner light machine guns, set up farther along the ridge and on the flank of
the ravine. The second Stoner team in
the triangle would swap with one of the other teams to gain fire superiority
and let their team mates disengage and escape.

Marty positioned himself just off to one
side of the point of the triangle and nearest the approaching enemy. When he spotted two NVA soldiers attempting to
scout their position, Marty made sure the safety on the suppressed Smith and
Wesson Model 39 semi-automatic pistol chambered with 9mm rounds was off as he
slid it through the foliage and aimed it at the NVA soldiers, who were less
than twenty yards away.

The first soldier who fell with two red
holes in his face caused the second to pause before he, too, started to fall
face flat on the wet earth. A third
crawled up, touched the soldiers and looked up, trying to find the shooter,
when Marty squeezed the trigger two more times. The third NVA soldier crumpled to the ground
on top of one his comrades, not knowing where the shooter was located.

The clatter of several PKM light machine
guns broke the sudden quiet and sent bullets whizzing well over his head were
meant to pin his team down as the attack began. Marty was sure four were
spraying bullets at their position below the top of the ravine, which meant,
according to his knowledge of North Vietnamese People’s Army organizations,
that there was at least a platoon in front of them. If they followed their traditional doctrine,
the series of attacks from the front and the flank would to try to flush them
out into the clearing, which would make it easy for the NVA soldiers on the
other side to pick them off.

The intermittent machine gun fire went
on for about five minutes, providing cover to allow the NVA to get close so
they could rush the SEALs’ position and overwhelm them with superior numbers.
Marty was wondering why the rounds weren’t chewing up the dirt at the edge of
the ravine when the first Claymore went off and the steel balls made three
distinct noises as they ripped through the leaves, smacked into tree trunks, and
thudded into NVA soldiers. The second Claymore banged off with the same result
as the first with the added clang of the spoon coming off when the trip line
for the Claymore was released by its explosion. A few seconds later, the grenade went off. The explosions and the screams from the mine’s
victims told the SEALs that the attackers were about thirty yards from their
position.

The gaps between the bursts from the
PKMs had become shorter and begun to taper off when there was a yell and the
thrashing of men running through the jungle, which set off a ripple of their
remaining six Claymores. After the
singing of the mine’s ball-bearings died down, the surviving NVA soldiers
charged.

Marty dropped the first two men he saw
with short three-round bursts from his M-16. As much as he hated and mistrusted
the light automatic rifle, because of its reputation for jamming in the middle
of a firefight, Gringo Six carried them for two reasons. One, because it fired the same 5.56mm
cartridge as the Stoners, and two, each man could carry three hundred and sixty
rounds, along with a spare one hundred- round box magazine for the Stoners.

Pausing between targets, Marty could
hear the Stoner on the left side of the triangle’s base ripping off short aimed
bursts. With only a dozen thirty-round
clips per man, the SEALs used discipline and aimed their fire; they didn’t have
the ammo supply to spray and pray. They had to get fire supremacy in a hurry
and then disengage.

When the SEALs didn’t see any new
targets and the PKMs stopped firing, Marty tapped the Stoner team leader in the
ravine on the shoulder, then pointed to the position where the second Stoner
was hidden and had, according to their plan, still not fired a shot. A nod, and the two men reached the second
position just as the second rush came. All
four men left in the triangular shaped ravine were firing continuously when the
leader of the fire team on the other side of the ravine looked at Marty, who
gave him the signal to bug out. Marty
and his teammate kept up a steady stream of accurate bursts while the two men
joined the four others about thirty yards farther up the hill and away from the
NVA.

The PKMs started increasing their rate
of fire, but the shooting was still well above the edge of the ravine. Lying on his back, reloading, it suddenly
struck Marty why the soldiers were firing the PKMs high. “Get two grenades ready.” He pointed toward the clearing behind them
four times to give his fire team the direction to toss grenades, then mouthed one,
two, three, and both men tossed their first grenades simultaneously,
following quickly with their seconds.

Screams from wounded men in the elephant
grass confirmed what he suspected. One of the Stoners started spraying the
elephant grass, the other started shooting, killing men in the jungle
approaching the right side of the ravine, giving Marty and his fire teammate
cover to scramble out and join the rest of the team as they poured bullets into
the NVA soldiers swarming over their former position.

The SEALs kept up a steady stream of
accurate fire for another two minutes before clambering down a steep slope
they’d scouted the day before in case they needed to get out of the area. On the
way down the trail, one of the SEALs, Thomas, at the tail end of the line
yelled, “Shit, I’m hit!”

Chief Jenkins and two other SEALs ran
back up the trail. While one man kept
firing, the Chief and the other looped their arms under the fallen man’s armpits
and hauled him down to the others, who scanned the jungle for NVA while the
team’s medic tended to Thomas.

Sixty minutes later, Marty called a halt
and the team deployed in a rough circle around its leader.

“Ammo check.”

The reports from the seven other members
told him that they’d expended about forty percent of their ammunition for the
M-16s and all their Claymores. For the
Stoners, they had three one hundred-round boxes left for each.

Satisfied with the report because he had
guessed that they were down to less than fifty percent, he pulled out his map. “We need to call in and tell Big Mother 40
that Kneissl 200 is the new pick-up point and we’ll be there for a dawn pick
up.”

The radioman nodded and began getting
the radio ready.

Chief Chris Jenkins, Gringo Six’s number
two, cradled his M-16 in one arm while he levered himself into a sitting
position on the muddy jungle floor next to his team leader. “What the hell happened back there?”

“I think some of their scouts stumbled
on us and then they moved on us from two directions, figuring the first to make
contact would fix our position and keep us occupied to burn up ammo. While they
were doing that, they’d hit us from another direction and then from the back.” Marty used a twig to draw their position and
the direction of the attack in the soft earth. “The PKMs firing well over our heads gave it
away. The bastards were making sure they
didn’t hit their own guys in the elephant grass.”

“Got it. Good news is there were a bunch of bodies in
the ravine and in the grass. My guess is there was the better part of a company
coming at us in that ravine and we got maybe thirty.”

“Yeah, but that was way too close. They almost got us all.”

“Boss, Billiard Ball is on the line. This airplane’s call sign is Billiard Ball
Zero Nine.” The radioman handed Marty
the handset.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 11, 1972, 1630 LOCAL
TIME, KALININ, SOVIET UNION

The cold gray sky reflected his mood and
told him more snow was coming to the Zhukov Command Academy of Air Defense,
located on the Volga River about a hundred miles northwest of Moscow.The low temperatures meant spring was still a
long way off.The wind battering the
window outside his small office, cluttered with Soviet Air Defense

Force missile systems’ manuals, was a
hard reminder that winter was still around.The side of his messy desk sat against one of the dull gray concrete
walls adorned only by the obligatory pictures of Lenin and Breshnev.The desk was dominated by the only real
picture - a large black-and-white photo of a young girl and her mother.

Today was the fourth anniversary of his
wife’s death from pneumonia.He and
Valentina had been married for twenty-four years. The coming Monday would be
the anniversary of their child’s, Alexandra’s, death. Fewer tears came with
each anniversary, but even though the pain lessened with time, it still hurt.

When he heard a knock on the door, he
placed the framed picture on the bookcase behind him.It had been taken in happier times when he’d
been stationed in East Germany.“Come
in.”

Colonel Alexei Koniev stood up when he
saw the towering figure of General Dimitri Poliakov, the head of the school
where he was a senior instructor, teaching air defense system tactics and
doctrine.The school was the older man’s
last assignment, and the respected World War II veteran had stayed on active
duty in the army he loved as long as he could. Poliakov, the father of the
Soviet surface-to-air missile systems tactical doctrine, was a very, very large
man, almost two-and-a-quarter- meters tall, and Koniev guessed a taut, muscled
one hundred and twenty- five kilograms.“Alexei, am I interrupting something?”

“No, sir.I was just reading and grading some of my
students’ papers.”

“You looked very thoughtful.Were you thinking of Valentina and
Alexandra?”

Alexei realized that his moist eyes had
given him away.Poliakov had rescued him
from the bottle and despair by installing him in the school to dry out and
share his innovative ideas.“It is the
fourth anniversary of Valentina’s death, and next week is the anniversary of
Alexandra’s passing. It is a hard time of the year for me.”

“I am sorry.I should have remembered the dates.It is hard to lose a wife, much less a wife
and child just a week apart.”

“Life must go on.”And they wouldn’t have died if their great
socialist republic provided competent doctors who could stay sober so they
could use their knowledge to treat their patients, or sufficient medicines for
its citizens.

“I have something that may cheer you up.
It will let you put some of your more
interesting theories into practice.”The
general was referring to Koniev’s top secret study called “Ambushing Attacking
Aircraft with Dispersed Missile Sites.”

“What do I have to do?” The only place they were shooting Soviet
surface-to-air missiles at enemy aircraft was in North Vietnam. Koniev was one of the favored few who saw the
reports coming out of that embattled country. He was careful not to voice his opinion that
the optimistic analyses overstated the effectiveness of the missiles. When asked, he offered no comment other than
saying they made interesting reading.

“The General Staff wants you to test
your theories in North Vietnam. They, as
I do, think you are the perfect man for the job. This is a two-year assignment. You will be told more if you agree to go.”

“When would I leave?” It wasn’t like Koniev had a choice.

“Soon. We will send you to language school to learn
Vietnamese. We cannot assume that our
allies will speak Russian. Then off you
go to Hanoi where you will be further briefed. The plan has you in Hanoi by the first week of
April.” The general stopped for a few
seconds. “You should get a star out of
this.”

“Thank you for your confidence, General,
but you know I am not after promotions.” Koniev looked up at the General, who was
leaning with both hands on the back of the chair in front of his desk. “How big is the detachment and who will I be
working for in Vietnam?”

“From what I understand, we’ll be
sending about four to eight officers who have been trained here, about a dozen
technicians to maintain the missiles, and a platoon of our special forces—you
know, the Spetznaz—to protect the stuff we don’t want our Vietnamese friends to
have. I don’t know any other details. My guess is that our Vietnamese allies will
provide security and you will be responsible for shooting the latest generation
Divina missiles.”

“Sir, I’ll go.”

“Excellent. I will notify the general staff, who will be
pleased. Do not discuss this with
anyone. We will tell your colleagues you have been picked for a new
assignment.”

Taken from Chapter
7 – IN HACK

THURSDAY, MAY
11, 1972, 0812 LOCAL TIME, YANKEE STATION AIRCRAFT CARRIER, GULF OF TONKIN

Josh and Jack walked into the ready room
that HC-7’s Detachment 110 shared with the reconnaissance squadron that flew
Vigilantes off the USS Ranger. The heavy attack recon squadron only had about
fifteen officers and had lots of extra space.

“Lieutenant Haman and Lieutenant Junior
Grade D’Onofrio!” The commanding voice
came from one of the vinyl-covered ready room chairs.

Josh turned to see a commander coming
toward them from the back of the ready room. “Yes, sir.”

“The chief of staff wants to see you,
and I am to escort both of you to his office now.” The commander
pointed to the door as if to emphasize the last word. It was then that Josh saw the Judge Advocate
General’s insignia on his collar.His
nametag had the CTF 77 logo and ‘Winthrop’ in white letters.

Commander Winthrop ushered them into a
large—by shipboard standards—office and then sat in a chair in the corner,
leaving both lieutenants standing in front of the captain’s desk. It had a large name plate with the logo
‘Commander, Task Force 77’ on the corner, along with the name ‘Martin Ruppert’
in gold letters. The man with eagles on
his collars was flipping impatiently between pages in two folders flat on his
desk.

“You are at attention.” The captain spat out the words in a command
voice and shifted his gaze from one folder to the other as both aviators stood
in a rigid position of attention. “Do either of you know what rules of
engagement are for?”

“Yes, sir.” Both Jack and Josh answered almost
simultaneously.

“Enlighten me. What are the ROE for
ships from neutral nations?” Ruppert’s
head came up and his eyes bored holes in the two junior officers.

“They are not to be fired upon.”Josh paused for a second before adding,
“Unless they commit a hostile act that puts U.S. forces in danger.Then we are supposed to either evade and
withdraw or return fire with enough force to stop the hostile action.”

Josh wasn’t sure whether it was
annoyance or anger, but whatever it was, Ruppert was closer to a boil than a
simmer.What the hell was this
about?They’d both just been briefed on
the ROE and both had passed the written test.

“Who was the mission commander on the
HH-3A during the rescue on May eight?

“Sir, I was.”

“And you’re Lieutenant Haman.”It was more of a statement than a question.The captain tossed one of the folders aside.

“Yes sir, I was the mission commander?”

“Why did you order your crewman to fire
on neutral ships?”

“We fired on the Valentinov and
the Razov only after they fired on us with DshKs which could have easily
shot us down.”

“Why didn’t you evade or withdraw?”

Josh paused for a second.“Two reasons, sir.First, we had already taken hits.Second, if we had not fired back my crew and
the helicopter would have been exposed to more gunfire that would probably have
shot us down, because it would have been several minutes before we could get
out of range.So we encouraged them to
stop firing.As you know, we routinely
fly near anchored ships in the harbor because we know that the North Vietnamese
don’t want to hit them.No one has told
us not to do it.”

“Don’t be cute with words with me,
Lieutenant.Both of you and your crew
are in a lot of hot water.You’ve
created a goddamn international incident.”The captain’s face flushed with anger as he tossed copies of Izvestia
and Pravda to the front of the desk. Both had pictures of an HH-3A
with tracers streaming from the mini-gun. “These were couriered to me from
CINCPAC and let me tell you what the articles say.”

“No need to, sir, I speak and read
Russian. The headline on Pravda says ‘U.S. helicopter attacks innocent Soviet
merchant ship.’The—” Josh started to
reach for the paper but it was pulled back.Josh wondered why the captain was getting so upset by Soviet
propaganda.And what about the rescue?

“Lieutenant, you are at attention!” Ruppert slammed his hand down on the desk and
then took a deep breath, but his cheeks flamed bright red. “Not only did this
make the Russian papers, but the New York fucking

Times carried the Izvestia story with the fucking Russian
journalist’s by- line.”Captain Ruppert
threw the front page of the U.S. paper across the desk.“You idiots killed at least ten Soviet
merchant marine sailors and wounded two dozen more.The State Department wants your heads, along
with your crews’, on a silver platter.They’re trying to contain this war and you’ve just tried to expand it.”

“Sir, if you read—”

“I’m talking, and you, Lieutenant Haman,
you are listening.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lieutenant, this is an order and don’t
fuck it up.You and your crew are in
hack.All of you are to pack your gear
and board the next COD to Subic Bay.There, you will report to the HC-7 Support Detachment O-in- C as well as
to the JAG officer at the Cubi Point Naval Air Station. You are also grounded
and will not leave the Cubi Point facility until the pending judicial action,
which will probably be a general court-martial, is completed.You will be confined to the BOQ and only go
to work and the officers club for meals.You will also be in your rooms after nineteen-thirty.If you violate these conditions, you will be
confined in the brig.”Captain Ruppert
fumbled around for a manila folder.“These
are your formal orders.Now, get out of
my office and get off this ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

Neither said anything until they got
back to their stateroom where Josh turned to Jack.“What did you do with the film from the
Topcon?”

“It’s still in my helmet bag; I forgot
to turn it in.”Jack paused for a
second. “You don’t want to talk about what is going to happen to us?It sounds like we’re going to be poster boys
for a public execution.”

“Good, and not yet.First, when the smoke clears, cooler heads
will prevail.If not, our careers are
over unless we want to hire some expensive lawyers.So, what we have to do is be prepared to
prove our innocence.”

“And you’re an expert on this?”Jack’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

“Not exactly, but this is not the first
time I’ve been in hack.”Josh looked
into his friend’s face. Action, not worrying, was needed.“I’ve got the film from my Nikon.When we get to Subic, we’ll go to the Hobby
Shop photo lab, process the film and see what we can see.”

“But he said we were not allowed to go
anywhere except the BOQ, the club to eat, and the squadron.The Hobby Shop Photo Lab was not on the
list.”

“I know, but it is in the building next
door to the BOQ.Are you going to tell
anyone we made a slight detour for an hour or so?”

“Okay.
Just so you know, I’m pretty sure the
guys manning the guns were Spetznaz. I
could see the blue-and-white striped jerseys they wear under their fatigues.” Jack fished out two rolls of film and stuffed
them in his pocket. “Are you sure we’re not going to get hammered? I can live with getting tossed out of the
Navy, but breaking big rocks into small rocks at Leavenworth for years, no
way.”

“My gut says we’re going to be okay.” He was just as scared as Jack, but right now
he was focused on exoneration. “Right now, the armchair admirals are looking
for someone to hang to show they are forcing the warriors to play by their
politicians’ ridiculous rules.”

“So what chance do we have? There are probably admirals lining up to make
examples out of us so they can tell their buddies how they are helping win the
war.”

“Here’s what I think happened. Somebody in the State Department got his
panties in a wad because he had to work late one night answering a bunch of
questions from some high mucky-muck about how do we deal with this instead of
what caused it. Fixing blame is more
important than figuring out why.” Josh
popped open a can of Coke. “When the smoke clears and someone at CINCPAC comes
to their senses they will realize that, first, we picked up two guys in the
middle of Haiphong Harbor. Second, we
took a fair amount of fire from two Russian ships. Third, if they string us up—figuratively
speaking— no one will go into Haiphong to pick up guys who land there. This is
not a message they want to send to the air wings. And fourth, last time I checked, we were doing
our job. The Russians shot at us, we
shot back, and I think the Russians are pissed they didn’t bag us. Now they have a couple of shot-up ships and
casualties that they have to explain at home, so why not blame the Americans
and try to create a diplomatic incident?”

Jack wasn’t yet convinced, but worrying
wasn’t going to help. “We need to tell
the guys, and they are gonna be pissed.”

Synopsis

Big Mother 40 A great read on Navy helicopter rescue operations in the Vietnam era. A very well written, exciting, fast moving book about the life of two Navy lieutenants. A Navy Helicopter pilot and a Navy Seal and their teams performing their duties in extremely hazardous conditions. Although fiction, Marc's knowledge of Navy Helicopter and Navy SEAl operations and the planning it takes to complete these types of missions is evident throughout the book. His understanding of the overall concept of joint and naval operations and the specifics of both Special Forces and helicopter missions during the Vietnam era makes this a very believable scenario. I personally know that Marc lived the life of a avy rescue helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War. Ken L. Fisher Rear Admiral USN (retired) Naval Aviator and fighter pilot

Texas Association of Authors?is the only organization in Texas whose focus is to promote the authors within the great state of Texas itself. Texas Authors leverages the knowledge and expertise of many different authors to help promote others within the world of reading and writing.